SAM Allardyce does not lose any sleep over low attendances any more.

Managing a team fighting for promotion in front of crowds of 14,000 told him all he needed to know about the gate potential at the Reebok.

Having topped the Premiership in an unbelievable start to the season and still falling well short of the stadium's capacity has served only to reinforce his view.

But he still has a moan when he sees the figures.

"It doesn't really bother me any more but it disappoints me," says the Wanderers' boss.

"We're a Premiership club yet we can only pull 6,000 for a Worthington Cup tie!"

There was a distinctly hollow atmosphere at the Reebok on Monday night when more than 21,000 of the 28,000 seats were empty.

Has the Worthington Cup lost its appeal? Was Wanderers v Nottingham Forest a turn off?

Surely it cannot have been the fact that the game was being screened live on TV. The ITV moguls were happy to stump up £100,000 to feature the game but their digital sports channel has audience figures even more pathetic than the Reebok's .

It was a departure from Wanderers' traditional Tuesday night slot, of course, but Allardyce - honest enough to admit he agreed the switch for the money - does not buy that excuse.

"I know there were some people who were misled by what they'd seen on Teletext, where it was still saying the game was being played on Tuesday," he acknowledged, "but I don't think we'd have been looking at a big crowd anyway.

"You only need to go back to when we played Tranmere in the Worthington Cup semi-finals and pulled in a crowd of just 13,000."

There is a feeling in the game that the old League Cup - traditionally the poor relation of the FA Cup - has lost its lustre, particularly in the early rounds which have been poorly attended.

Experiment

Like many other clubs Wanderers have taken to slashing prices to boost crowds - £10 for adults in the lower tiers - but 5,761 for the second round tie against Walsall and 6,881 the other night suggests the experiment has not been a success.

"Liverpool pulled in more than 32,000 on Tuesday night," Allardyce enviously pointed out. "It was the same stage of the competition and they were only playing Grimsby.

"That speaks for itself."

Allardyce experienced the opposite end of the support spectrum at Parkhead on Tuesday night when he was among the 54,000 crowd that saw Celtic beat Rosenborg in the Champions League. "The atmosphere made the hairs on the back on my neck stand up," he said.